Chapter 144

Chapter 144: This Door Can’t Be Opened from This Side

Little Red Riding Hood looked like she was in an astonishingly good mood. Anyone who knew her well would’ve been stunned—she hadn’t looked this relaxed in a long time.

Still, she protested at Yu Sheng with a straight face. “My eighteenth birthday is next month. You can’t keep treating me like a child.”

“Anyone under eighteen is a kid,” Yu Sheng said, raising an eyebrow. “After you turn eighteen, I’ll treat you like an adult. Don’t forget to save me a piece of cake.”

The moment he said it, Foxy—who had been fussing over the chicks—snapped her head up. “Me too!”

After all that conversation, she had caught exactly one critical sentence.

Little Red Riding Hood laughed, then bared her teeth at Yu Sheng and Foxy like a playful wolf cub. “Fine. Even if knives fall from the sky, you still have to come celebrate my birthday. Whoever doesn’t come is a puppy.”

Yu Sheng grinned, pulled out his phone, hit one-click reporting on reflex, then casually opened a door back to the orphanage.

The glowing doorway formed soundlessly. On the other side was an empty corridor in the orphanage’s west building.

“Xiao Xiao! Rapunzel!” Little Red Riding Hood shouted from the edge of the platform. “We’re going home! It’ll get dark soon!”

Princess Rapunzel brought Xiao Xiao back, but the girl kept looking over her shoulder, reluctant to leave.

“I’m not done playing,” she pouted. “Can we come again next time?”

“Of course,” Yu Sheng said immediately. “I can come visit often. Maybe one day I can even leave a door in your orphanage on purpose.”

“You don’t have to take it that far,” Princess Rapunzel said, looking awkward. “That’s too much trouble…”

“It’s not trouble,” Yu Sheng said plainly. “It’s my research project lately. If your side has any outings for the younger kids, or sketching trips for the older ones, come find me. My valley doesn’t have much yet, but it’s definitely spacious. Those so-called parks in the city can’t compare.”

Little Red Riding Hood mulled over the idea for far too long and decided that putting “outing” and “otherworld” in the same sentence was deeply cursed.

But she was used to Yu Sheng by now.

The guests left.

“I don’t like human babies,” Irene declared the moment the door shut behind them. She marched over in a huff, smoothed her dress, then grabbed Yu Sheng’s pant leg and started climbing while grumbling nonstop. “So noisy. Always doing boring things and saying boring things. I don’t get what’s fun about chasing each other on grass…”

Yu Sheng glanced at her as she climbed onto his shoulder. “You looked like you were having a great time in the second half.”

Irene paused, considered that, then hugged his head and began gnawing on it.

Yu Sheng peeled her off with one hand. “Don’t.”

“What now?” Irene asked, utterly unbothered as she dangled by her collar. “Go home? It’s not dinner time yet.”

“Not yet.” Yu Sheng shook his head. “I need to run some… experiments. But first I have to call Bai Li Qing.”

He pulled out his phone under Irene’s curious stare, organized his thoughts, and dialed the number that had been haunting his recent days.

Bai Li Qing answered quickly. “Hello? Yu Sheng?”

“Ahem. Yeah, it’s me.” Yu Sheng cleared his throat. “Sorry about earlier. Things were chaotic on my end today. I just remembered to call you back.”

“It’s fine,” Bai Li Qing said evenly. “What do you want to say?”

“Two things,” Yu Sheng said. “First, I told you I had something I wanted the Bureau to help identify tomorrow. One of those things is from fairy tale—the black forest. And I want to apply for access to some records… about fairy tale.”

There was a brief silence.

Then Bai Li Qing said, “The archives from the period when the Special Operations Bureau centralized early fairy tale victim management and carried out early exploration of fairy tale’s otherworld. Is that what you mean?”

“You guessed it,” Yu Sheng said, letting out a breath. “Those records. About seventy years ago.”

“I assumed as much after hearing what you did today,” Bai Li Qing replied calmly. “I’m curious why you suddenly became interested. Is it because of that spirit realm detective called Little Red Riding Hood?”

“She’s the trigger,” Yu Sheng said, “but the main reason is that I want to get involved. I have a problem with that otherworld now. If I don’t deal with it, I won’t be able to sleep right.”

“It’s reason enough,” Bai Li Qing said without hesitation. “I’ll arrange it. Someone will pick you up tomorrow. The identification lab and the archives will be prepared in advance.”

Yu Sheng blinked. He’d expected agreement, but not that fast. “Ah. Thanks.”

“No trouble,” Bai Li Qing said. “What’s the second thing?”

“The second thing isn’t complicated,” Yu Sheng said, sounding embarrassed. “It’s just… annoying. I’m about to do some experiments.”

“Experiments?”

“Door Opening experiments,” Yu Sheng added. “There might be a lot of attempts. The method might be… creative. The scale is hard to predict, and the duration is uncertain. I figured one-click reporting won’t cut it, so I should call you.”

The line went quiet.

On Yu Sheng’s shoulder, Irene immediately started muttering gleefully, “She cursed. She cursed in her heart. Hehe.”

“No problem,” Bai Li Qing said at last. Her voice was still calm, but Yu Sheng could almost hear teeth grinding behind it. “I’ll notify the monitoring unit to disable automated alerts across the entire area and switch to manual recording. Call me after you’re done.”

The call ended.

Yu Sheng looked down at Irene, who stood with her hands on her hips and her chin held high, righteous as a judge.

“She definitely cursed just now,” Irene said firmly. “My spiritual intuition told me so.”

Then her eyes lit with curiosity. “So what are you experimenting on?”

Yu Sheng drew a slow breath. His hand lifted into the air.

“First,” he said, “I’m testing whether I can open a door into the black forest from the outside.”

A pale, illusory door formed in his grasp, trembling faintly in the air.

Yu Sheng narrowed his eyes, recalling the “frequency” he’d recorded inside the black forest. He fed it into the door, then carefully pulled it open.

In the next instant, the door shattered in total silence.

Irene and Foxy gasped at the same time.

Then dizziness slammed into Yu Sheng like a wave. He clutched his head and staggered.

“Benefactor!” Foxy rushed forward and wrapped her tail around him, steadying his body. “Was that backlash from your magic?!”

“I’m fine,” Yu Sheng said through clenched teeth. “Just dizzy for a second.”

As the sensation faded, he waved at them. “Door Opening failed… for the first time.”

“It can fail?!” Irene stared, suddenly worried. “Are you really okay?”

“I’m okay,” Yu Sheng said, forcing a smile as he freed himself from Foxy’s tail. His gaze stayed fixed on the empty spot where the door had been.

“It shouldn’t be like this,” he muttered. “From the black forest, I can open a door back to the outside world. So why can’t I open a door into the black forest from the outside?”

Irene tilted her head. “Because… ‘this door can’t be opened from this side’?”

Yu Sheng shuddered like he’d tasted something rotten. “Don’t say that. I’m allergic to that line.”

“Could it be because this valley is part of benefactor’s cave abode?” Foxy offered uncertainly. “This still isn’t a normal ‘real world,’ right? Maybe that affects it.”

Irene’s eyes widened. “Hey, Silly Fox, your brain works sometimes!”

“What Foxy said makes sense,” Yu Sheng said, nodding. “Let’s try outside.”

He opened a door to an empty street near Wu Tong Road 66.

Not long after, Yu Sheng sat on the curb near his front door, dizzy enough to see double. Across the road, the electric poles looked like they’d split into twins.

Even the tall, thin shadow by the pole had three heads.

So it wasn’t about whether he was standing in true “real space.” As long as he tried to open a door from the outside world directly into the black forest, something went wrong.

Frustrated, the group returned to the valley.

“Looks like it really doesn’t work,” Irene said, chin propped in her hands as she sat on Yu Sheng’s shoulder. “You can open a door out from the black forest, but you can’t open a door into it from outside. If you want to enter, you can only take the dream route. I think it’s because the black forest is an awareness space. Like… you can wake up from a dream, but trying to physically walk from the real world into a dream makes no sense.”

Yu Sheng didn’t answer.

He listened, turning similar ideas over and over in his mind.

But something still felt wrong.

The black forest’s one-way nature… was it really only because of that?

Only because it was an awareness space?

Then how had he brought Wolf Granny out of the black forest?

And what about that slip of paper?